connections
elsewhere on this site
Video: last week’s show with DJ Olive
Posted on February 5th, 2008 by dan.
Categories: video, musician, performing, nyc, improvisation, live visuals.
The video below is a brief excerpt of my 35 minute set with DJ Olive at {R}ake last week. Olive played a beautiful ambient set. I did live visuals on all four screens, mixing together new HD footage (@800×450) shot with my new HV20, mixed in a custom application built in Jitter with the v001 system. vade graciously recorded my set and I’ve posted the whole thing to the Internet Archive.
Alternate versions and downloads
Fleet
Posted on May 25th, 2006 by dan.
Categories: shows, bloggage, nyc, music, live visuals, improvisation, Grad school.
It’s Fleet Week, apparently. Partying sailors abound. I was to see two shows tonight but the first one was so enthralling that I missed the second. So it goes. Adam Kendall did visuals for Roger Eno and Plumbline at Tonic: lovely music paired with absolutely brilliant visuals. Adam’s approach is very painterly and moving on a gut level. Since I saw his work for the first time two years ago, his craft has gotten better and better. Misty, melting, mnemonic melanges of powerful, personal films — see? Words don’t do it justice. Watch his Case Studies, which are fairly close to what he did tonight.
It was really cool to see a great pianist like Roger Eno play. He had a delicate touch and phrasing, well-placing his lines in Plumbline’s laptop work. He showed how you could improvise just outside the tonal structure of a (seemingly) fixed set of tracks, which is something that had stumped my imagination a bit when thinking about how to play piano in a Share jam with similar laptop musicians. And he watched Adam’s visuals closely. Thumbs up.
Aside to Adam: are you putting out 320 x 240? I’d love to see your stuff in higher res. Good reason to start incorporating those GPU shaders… 
The show I missed was my friend Eli’s, which I wrote about earlier. Ah, well — next time (which is just what Eli said). He’s going on a solo tour this summer, hitting LA, Vancouver, Buffalo, and other places I can’t recall. If you like the tracks on his myspace and you know someone with a venue in the lower 48, drop Eli a line — he’ll probably be interested.
Challenges
Adam and Anton’s approaches seem similar and complementary to me. I hastily scribbled an idea that came to me during the show: challenges. I’d like to give collaborative challenges to my fellow/favorite visualists, e.g., swap: Adam and Anton doing a duo show with their current setups (god’s eye and vade, respectively). Both of them predominantly use a library of video clips that are both personally meaningful and formally interesting, which they know and have practiced well. Now swap their libraries and let each other decide which clip the other will use next. Connect them with an Ethernet cable and a very simple Max patch to streamline the process. The patch notifies them when a video’s been selected and previews it so they can prepare to slip it in.
Regardless of whether A and A would dig this idea, it’s the kind of collaborative ‘game’ (or structure or form) I’d like to explore more. Rather than focus on the technical aspects of current and future video mixers, which seems to snag us all up when we talk about visual jams, I’d like to see my fellow visualists play games with each other like this. And I’d like to build simple Max patches — and potentially KeyWorx plugins, in the new version of KeyWorx that’s on the table for the 2nd phase of Kids Connect — to aid these games. Thoughts?
Kids Connect dev
Speaking of Kids Connect, we had a really good meeting today that cleared up a lot of the questions Josephine and I had, e.g., the level of supervision needed, if/how many student teachers we’d have to help teach, when we’d get funds released to start work in Second Life, and more. Plus we were joined by Dr. Garey Ellis, who heads the Promise Fund’s Inner Force program. Not only did he have valuable insights and suggestions for KC, he reminded us how new this kind of work (online collaboration, visual performance, creative uses of consumer technology) is, and how exciting it will be for the workshop students and parents. It feels really good to be sharing my knowledge outside of the relatively narrow improv comedy world.
Two wrights
Posted on May 15th, 2006 by dan.
Categories: shows, nyc, music, theater, improvisation.
I bumped into Matt Moses last night, a very funny and genial improviser and playwright. Our groups Gunshow and Stockholm Syndrome used to do a lot of shows together and we had the same coach, the venerable Dan Goldstein, improv teacher, decision studies psychologist and marketing genius. Matt’s moving to Yale for a 3 year stint in their graduate playwright program. Yay, Matt! I hope you’ll find grad school as much of a growing experience as I have.
And speaking of great playwrights, I got an email from the UCB Theater, telling me that Anthony King’s funny, charming, ridiculous musical comedy spoof GUTENBERG! THE MUSICAL! will have a free show tomorrow night. You can hear some songs from the show on its very own myspace and read the show’s very! enthusiastic! website!. Anthony (book) and Scott Brown (music), play the parts of the show’s chipper, clueless creators, Bud Davenport and Doug Simon, who did all their research about Johann Gutenberg using Microsoft Encarta. My favorite part of the show was the hats: Bud and Doug have dozens of cheap mesh hats with the names of the show’s characters painstakingly spelled out in serif Sharpie. At any given moment in the show, each of them will have 6 hats in his hands, doffing and donning them again and again. It’s deadpan, dead-on musical satire from end to end and joyfully silly. UCB’s site says it’s sold out already but there’ll be some tickets at the door.
Idle in the Saved Night (silent)
Posted on May 11th, 2006 by dan.
Categories: music, nyc, performing, programming, art, live visuals, improvisation, theater, philosophy.
Tonight, I’ll be performing at Bunker at SubTonic, the 2nd show of a developing performance called Idle in the Saved Night, inspired by the writings of Deborah Levitt. It’s a mixed piece for live visuals and acting. In a nutshell, I’ll be playing video (of mental patients from the 40s) from my laptop to the projector, standing in front of the projection screen …acting funny… and capturing my strange behavior and gestures with a live camera, which’ll then get chopped up and spit back out to the screen on top of me. It will be divine. And since the music at SubTonic is curated separately from the visuals, I’ll be doing it mute. Instead of speaking the texts I’ve gathered for the videos, I’ll run them on the screen as text. ‘Twill be an interesting challenge.
By the way, I highly recommend EyeWash tonight. Most of the visual acts will be getting physical: from performance art to burlesque to unique interfaces. This is good. For did John not say, let’s get into physical/ Let me hear your body talk? Should be swell. I’ll be there if I get my patch ready in time.
This just in, a great show to see Saturday night featuring my Gunshow-mate Ryan Sturt:
Have you ever seen Showgirls? Pretty crappy right? What would make it better you ask? If it were done with sockpuppets! Yup. I’m in a sockpuppet version of Showgirls. It’s been running for a few years in Chicago and played in New York in 2002, and now it’s back in our city with fresh jokes and extra filth. It’s every Saturday night at 8pm until the end of June.
It’s super raunchy. The puppets will dance your face off! I’m playing a couple different characters in it, and the character voice stuff has been a lot of fun.
Come if you can!
For more info, directions, and tickets, here’s the flyer and the ticket link:
vade// will play at the Bunker as well — he has been absolutely tearing it up lately with his visuals — just brilliant work. He played at {R} A K E at Monkeytown with Larry 7 on Wednesday, an unusual pairing that kept them both on their toes. It was gorgeous. The entire evening was, to be precise, ecstatic. Now you know I am often accused of hyperbole and over-enthusiasm and to this I would retort: wake up! The world is full of beauty and interest and commonality if you’re paying attention. I pay attention. Hence, I enjoy things more fully, perhaps, than the next human.
Joyful details of which I speak, of {R} A K E, the evening of electro-acoustic music and visuals run by Satoshi Takeishi, Shoko Nagai and Adam Kendall:
- the first act was Kato Hideki (solo bass guitar) and Giles Hendrix* (video). Kato was exceptionally sensitive to his instrument and the sound in the room. He drew unusual sounds out of the bass, from the lightest of touches with a bow to heavy slams of his fist against the body, punctuated with long, deliberate silences. Giles’ visuals were equally slow and exploratory. I must admit I went into a trance/fell asleep at some points, which sounds bad but felt great: I drifted lightly in and out of the sound and light. As I suspected, Kato uses a custom tuning system based on prime numbers. I suspected it was different — not that it was prime.
How can I describe Vortex’s music? Words fail me. It was an ecstatic experience. Satoshi is a percussionist but not limited to struck instruments — he also played the waterphone with a bow that night. Shoko plays keyboards and (what I can only describe as) Pan pipes. They both do some Max/MSP manipulation and layering of the sound, which seems to run on auto-pilot mostly. Each time I’ve heard them play it’s been a unique performance, an environment of sound created entirely of the moment. Unlike many musicians, they respond to your visuals when you play with them; I feel honored that my first visual gig was with them at {R} A K E. Wednesday they played with visuals by Shimpei Takeda, who used only a video camera, a flashlight and a jar of water to make a truly beautiful light show. Chika whispered to me that it reminded her of my work with live camera, which is quite a flattering comparison. Seeing it gave me a shove to do a similar work with water and bubbles I’ve had in mind for a while.
It was an evening of synaesthesia, the visuals and the music combined - to use the oft-abused word — in synergy. The last act was no exception. Anton (vade//) and Larry 7 played the room like a drum. Monkeytown’s back room, if you haven’t seen it, is a hard-walled cube with projections on each wall. A visualist can easily blind the audience and break the mood with the combined light from the four projectors and I’ve been thankful for my earplugs on several occasions when the audio artists have found the resonant frequency of the room and made it ring how I imagine the inside of the fuel chamber of the Space Shuttle must sound. (Alright, that last was definitely hyperbole.) However, Larry 7 and vade// did no such thing. Larry, who I’m told used to work for Andy Warhol, played with a bunch of analogue electronics, tube amps, a multi-stringed instrument with mics on it, and four mics arranged in a cross on a rotating turntable. Also quite difficult to describe. Let’s just say he succeeded in his aim, “to set up situations where he has almost no control over what happens, so he can be entertained along with the audience.” Anton’s setup is as digital as Larry’s is analogue — just a laptop — and he usually doesn’t take his MIDI keyboard along so it’s all controlled with the mouse and keyboard.
Again, beautiful stuff. I almost stayed home to program but I’m so glad I went. Time to program now: the patch for tonight is almost ready. I rebuilt it from scratch to make sure I got the order of operations right.
* note: I am very envious of Giles’ domain name.
Addendum
If you don’t bother to read my del.icio.us links in the spliced feed, you’ll have missed a great listening opportunity: an album of Radiohead covers called Exit Music - Songs with Radio Heads. I particularly recommend the cover of Just by Mark Ronson and Alex Greenwald, which reveals the hidden funk of RH with handclaps, djembe and sexy horn blasts. My Flickr photos are also in the spliced feed and I’m just about to upload a shitload of cameraphone pics featuring the flowers of which I spoke yesterday. Name the purple pom-pom, s’il vous plait.
Improv Everywhere: Just Helping Out
Posted on May 1st, 2006 by dan.
Categories: performing, nyc, america, improvisation.
Last weekend, Improv Everywhere staged another mission for Manhattan. 80 IE agents in royal blue shirts hung around in a Best Buy store, just being helpful.
>The reaction from the employees was pretty typical as far as our missions go. The lower level employees laughed and got a kick out of it while the managers and security guards freaked out. […]
>With our main photographer busted, I took out my camera and started taking covert snapshots. One employee caught me in the act and rushed over. As soon as he got to me, I caught him off guard with a question, “Hey, do you know where I can find the right memory cards for my camera?” He stammered for a second and then said, “Sure. They’re right over there.” I thanked him and was on my way. Another employee caught me moments later in the DVD section, but I disarmed him with a question as well, “Do you know how much the Star Trek DS9 DVDs are? There is no price tag.” We chatted for a second about how expensive the set was, and by the time I walked away he forgot all about the camera.
post-DSIF
Posted on March 4th, 2006 by dan.
Categories: theater, improvisation.
The Dirty South Improv Festival was great. I had a wonderful time hanging out with my NC friends and some people I only see at festivals, did a couple fun performances (it’s novel being the teacher in a Teacher/Student improv show) and my workshops went great. I had a bunch of college students, some of them very new to improv, many of them telecom. majors or ‘the technical person’ in their group, we had time to shoot a lot of scenes, and all of them left seeming very excited about video improv. I’m really excited about teaching. Up until a year ago, I never thought of myself as someone who could teach; I always thought, that’s for other people, not me, not the teaching type. Then going to grad school opened that door just a crack and Ross inviting me to teach the workshops pulled it open. I’m lucky to have such supportive friends.
video improv workshop follow-up
Posted on February 23rd, 2006 by dan.
Categories: teaching, education, theater, improvisation, Grad school.
The video improv workshop Saturday went really well. Me am teachzor! 
We had about 14 people altogether from widely differing backgrounds: dance, video art, videography, music, network collaboration, graphic design, and only five people from improv comedy. We worked on camera- and scene-work, shooting scenes out on the streets and in Chelsea Market (conveniently right across the street from Atlantic Acting School’s new (and pristine) rehearsal space). I spent much of the lecture and discussion time introducing the class to the different roles of the actors, shooter and runner/timekeeper in crafting scenes on video. What I learned from the workshop:
- I can teach
- The teacher must be the time nazi so things don’t get rushed
- and a possible solution to the 3rd Act Problem of Video Improv, which is when (two-thirds through the show) the different shooting groups meet to mash up their scenes and the shooting slows to an infinite pause on the event horizon of a Black Hole of Brainstorming and Plotting Out the Scenes.
Video improv’s mutability is a great strength and a great weakness. On the one hand you have the power and potential of cinema with all its tricks and delights. On the other, when it comes time to mash up the scenes at the end of the show, there can be a huge trainwreck as everyone verbalizes their ideas, then debates their pros and cons — an instant power struggle in which dominant personalities win– and the the resulting scenes are deflated, scripty and late. This was sometimes a big problem in the Neutrino shows.
Conclusion: plot is just as much of a killer on video improv as stage improv. Early in the workshop, I stressed the importance of Yes Anding behind the camera just as much — more! — as in front of it. Never debate an idea. Always go with the first one offered. This goes without saying on the stage but is easy to let slip in the young art of video improv. More on this after this Saturday’s workshops.
video improv workshop
Posted on February 13th, 2006 by dan.
Categories: theater, improvisation, live visuals.
I’m flying down to North Carolina in a couple weeks to teach a video improv workshop at the 6th annual Dirty South Improv Festival. It’s my first time teaching such a workshop so I’m previewing/practicing it this Saturday in New York. It’s free and open to all interested improvising actors, shooters and visualists. Please let me know if you’re interested and pass this on to anyone you think would be. If you’re a yes or strong maybe, let me know so I can pre-register you with the security at Atlantic Theater Co Acting School (they’re in a new building with Google and there’s higher security). It’s this Saturday the 18th from 2 to 5 pm. Here’s the workshop description again:
> Improv on video: How is it different from improv on a bare stage? What can you do in a video improv show that is unique to this new hybrid form? Homebrew, grassroots video improv is slowly spreading through American improv communities. Let’s spread it faster by sharing ideas and techniques with each other. In this workshop, we will explore video improv techniques employed in the Neutrino Video Projects and other experimental video longforms. Camerawork, in-camera editing, scenework and structure will be explored. If time permits we will touch on networked, streaming video performance and visual manipulation (VJ-ing). Please beg, borrow or steal* a video camera to bring to the workshop: the more cameras we have the more we’ll able to play. Improvisers and cinematographers of all experience levels are welcome.
> * Well, maybe not steal. Please do your best to have a camera and know its basic functions before the workshop.
> Class is limited to 15 students.
details on the festival workshop for those of you who’ll be in NC: http://festival.dirtysouthimprov.com/2006/workshops/weekend.php?ClassID=14
Visual show and free video improv workshop
Posted on February 6th, 2006 by dan.
Categories: theater, improvisation, live visuals.
Two events coming up I’d like you to know about:
- I’m performing visuals with fellow VJ Chris Jordan at Monkeytown this Saturday, accompanying the music of ambient duo This Invitation. This will be an audience participation show: we’ll be handing out little, battery-powered slide projectors. Should be fun. Reservations recommended — as is the food! Come early and have a meal; Monkeytown’s got really good grub.
Saturday, February 18th I’m teaching a workshop in video improv: it’s practice for me and free for you, a preview of the workshop I’m teaching at this year’s Dirty South Improv Festival in Chapel Hill, NC. It’ll be at the Atlantic Theater Co Acting School. Email me to let me know if you’re coming. Details: > Improv on video: How is it different from improv on a bare stage? What can you do in a video improv show that is unique to this new hybrid form? Homebrew, grassroots video improv is slowly spreading through American improve communities. Let’s spread it faster by sharing ideas and techniques with each other. In this workshop, we will explore video improv techniques employed in the Neutrino Video Projects and other experimental video longforms. Camerawork, in-camera editing, scenework and structure will be explored. If time permits we will touch on networked, streaming video performance and visual manipulation (VJ-ing). Please beg, borrow or steal* a video camera to bring to the workshop: the more cameras we have the more we’ll able to play. Improvisers and cinematographers of all experience levels are welcome.
> * Well, maybe not steal. Please do your best to have a camera and know its basic functions before the workshop.
> Class is limited to 15 students.
Challenges for improvising visualists
Posted on January 31st, 2006 by dan.
Categories: theater, improvisation, live visuals.
What could stop a visualist from improvising on any suggestion?
- lack of flexibility in the software/hardware tools
- specifically in the ability to search and organize source media on the fly
- programs that do one thing really well but don’t play well with others
- lack of imagination
- an inability to draw very well
- …
What would aid a visualist to improvise on any suggestion, using a variety of source and live media?
- a file browser that grabs images and videos by tags/categories/keywords from a library/the Internet when supplied with keyword(s)
- a partner seeking/creating/organizing/preparing media for her/him
- a way of intuitively, rapidly filing new media away so that they may be retrieved graphically or textually, quickly
- rudimentary-to-excellent drawing skills (with perspective)
- a profundity of imagination
- …
Let’s say our standard for success at “improvising on any suggestion” is that the audience walks away thinking, “she sure did engage and explore visually my suggestion of “‘lesbian casting couch.’”
Yesterday I wondered whether I had strayed from my original thesis idea pre-enrollment. I pondered what I had presented to my fellow students and Carl on Thursday in Structures. It feels like a good show, interesting and exciting to work on, but not quite the meeting of improvising visualists and actors on a level playing field I had in mind. The current conception of my thesis show has the following elements. Let’s score each element on a continuum from fully structured (0) to fully improvised (10):
- a narrative backbone — pre-written — for the speakers/actors - 2
- prepared and practiced visual source media for the visualists - 5
- prepared and practiced sources for the musicians - 8*
- potential audience participation - 2
* Musicians have more improvisational freedom than visualists for a number of reasons.
Which averages to 4.25, just west of halfway between structure and improv. For comparison, I’d say most longform improv comedy shows are an 8 — just enough structure to encourage coherence. But the value of this one-dimensional metric is shaky because we’re comparing apples and oranges: the improvisational elements and expectations in music, theater and visuals are quite different. Yet the way I see The Improv Gap in visuals is framed by my work in improv comedy and articulated in the language of musical improv. Hmm. Thoughts welcome. Time for bed.